Blue Ribbon Committee Condemns National Security Courts
Source: Constitution Project

Today the Constitution Project condemned proposals to create a system of “national security courts” in a new white paper, “A Critique of ‘National Security Courts.’” In recent years, and particularly in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush affirming the constitutional rights of “enemy combatants” to challenge their detentions through habeas corpus, several scholars and government officials have called for the creation of specialized hybrid tribunals that would review the preventive detention of suspected terrorists (both within and outside of the territorial United States), conduct the detainees’ criminal trials, or, in some cases, both.

A bipartisan coalition of political leaders, national security experts, and legal scholars – all members of the Constitution Project’s Liberty and Security Committee or Coalition to Defend Checks and Balances – rejected such proposals this morning, contending that “they neglect basic and fundamental principles of American constitutional law, and they assume incorrectly that the traditional processes have proven ineffective. … We believe that the government can accomplish its legitimate goals using existing laws and legal procedures without resorting to such sweeping and radical departures from an American constitutional tradition that has served us effectively for over two centuries.” The signers describe the ability of traditional civilian and military courts to prosecute those suspected of terrorism and go on to recommend that Congress reject any proposals to create “national security courts.”

+ Full Report (PDF; 154 KB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Government and politics, Legal and law enforcement, National security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.